Following on from my previous post -you can see here if you missed it.
I made these two little birds you can see below, using UV resin inks with air dry clay – the birds being made from clay, and all the colours have been created using resin inks and dyes. One of the advantages of doing this, is that inks mixed with resin and cured, gives an instant result – unlike having to wait for paints to dry.
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With the first bird the one that resembles a Robin – you can see how the brown ink has run through the resin creating a feather like-effect on the wing, this is where it is handy to use a UV torch to cure, so as soon as you see the desired effect, you can instantly cure, thus stopping the inks running any further.
The second bird is much more a free fantasy bird, highly decorated, that bares no resemblance to a real bird at all. You can really let your imagination run wild here – its fun !
I have put together the video below, showing how I decorated both the birds above, to start with I have the clay birds made with air dry clay, in a stone colour – these had been drying for at least 3-4 days, before attempting to colour. I always begin by coating the whole piece in white epoxy paste, as it gives a good base to apply other colours too. (So even if I was to use paint instead of resin inks, I would have applied a layer of white acrylic paint first)
So lets watch the video now …
I think I will be making these birds into attractive bird hangers, where they can hang as wall art, or as I have mine hanging from rustic branch and twigs, with lights as decorative home décor corner piece. There are many different ways of displaying these birds – I have also used birds like these in framed canvas art, like this one below :-
I hope this encourages you to try different ways of adding colour to your air dry clay pieces, I personally feel that air dry clay and UV resin work very well together – the resin gives strength and protection to the rather vulnerable air dry clay, and of course a beautiful glazed finish.
In my next blog I will cover my top 5 tools – that I use all the time with crafts involving resin or air dry clay – all of my creations are available for purchase from my Etsy shop